The bloggers, Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, resigned following outrage over allegedly anti-Catholic rhetoric they had posted on their own blog posts before they joined the Edwards campaign last month.

The 350,000-strong Catholic League, a conservative religious group, had demanded that Edwards fire the two women and threatened to unleash a public relations blitz against his campaign.

The moral of the story? According to Zablit, bloggers are the problem.

--And she's found an "expert" on blogging, who may or may not have a blog himself but does have a book to sell, to back her angle.

"This probably is the year we learn and write new rules about how to integrate all of these new interactive instant media technology such as blogs, Facebook or YouTube into campaigns and elections," David Perlmutter, a professor and associate dean of graduate studies at the University of Kansas school of journalism, told AFP.

"Right now, a lot of people are experimenting and speculating and really just making stuff up as they go along but we're going to learn some lessons ... because nobody has written the rule book yet," added Perlmutter, author of "Blogwars: The New Political Battleground".

Be sure to run out and buy your copy.

Meanwhile, Zablit focuses on Marcotte and McEwan, while giving professional bigot Bill Donohue a pass:

The blog entries and other comments they had posted earned them the wrath of Catholic League president William Donohue who described them as "anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots."

That Donohue easily succeeded where a hundred right-wing bloggers failed is also unsurprising. Donohue has a long, dirty, but bizarrely successful career of conservative hit jobs. As Frances Kissling has noted, Donohue seems to take particular pleasure in silencing women.

In venues ranging from the New York Times to the major cable news networks, Donohue demanded that the Edwards campaign fire McEwan and me. The left blogosphere, furious that a smear artist might try to snap his fingers and bully a Democratic campaign into firing a staffer, pushed back hard. Liza at Culture Kitchen collected just a sampling of the hundreds of blog posts and letters that were protesting the very idea that such a manufactured controversy should have any impact on the staffing of presidential campaigns.

To me, it's rather shocking how such radical hate-filled bigots have gained currency in the mainstream media claiming that they are being oppressed by criticism of their bigotry.

Then again, maybe it's just a natural result. Most mainstream news outlets and reporters seem to work just hard enough to get a headline and a lead paragraph, and to hell with the details. The well-financed right-wing noise machine makes for convenient news. Even the respected NewsHour routinely hosts dogmatists from the well-funded Republican shill foundations to "analyze" the news.

If you build it, they will come. If you shout it loud enough, they will report it. QED.

Still, it is disturbing how these wingnut operatives -- whether freelance or funded -- wage political terrorism in American media. Amanda's Salon article offers some startling and offensive details:

I was hired by the Edwards campaign for the skills and talents I
bring to the table, and my willingness to work hard for what’s right.
Unfortunately, Bill Donohue and his calvacade of right wing shills
don’t respect that a mere woman like me could be hired for my skills,
and pretended that John Edwards had to be held accountable for some of
my personal, non-mainstream views on religious influence on politics
(I’m anti-theocracy, for those who were keeping track). Bill
Donohue—anti-Semite, right wing lackey whose entire job is to create non-controversies in order to derail liberal politics—has been running a scorched earth campaign to get me fired for my personal beliefs and my writings on this blog.

In fact, he’s made no bones about the fact that his intent is to
“silence” me, as if he—a perfect stranger—should have a right to
curtail my freedom of speech. Why? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m
pro-choice? Because I’m not religious? All of the above, it seems.

Regardless, it was creating a situation where I felt that every time
I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign. No matter what you think
about the campaign, I signed on to be a supporter and a tireless
employee for them, and if I can’t do the job I was hired to do because
Bill Donohue doesn’t have anything better to do with his time than
harass me, then I won’t do it. I resigned my position today and they
accepted.

William Donahue is scared to death of you. He just promised a
nationwide campaign to fight the success you have made possible. Ha!
Bring it on. It is about time this wingnut is exposed, and the media
shamed for treating him like a mainstream Catholic figure in the first
place.